Popular open source database management system DuckDB, which has more than half a billion downloads, is preparing to release its next iteration, previewing new features including a client/server mode.

The project, which has more than 40 thousand stars on GitHub, previewed DuckDB v2.0 on 17 August, adding a Quack extension for talking to other databases and asynchronous I/O to the analytical database system.

DuckLabs CEO Hannes Mühleisen said: “A major version bump is not something we do lightly, and it is not just ceremony: v2.0 ships a new SQL parser, a new default storage format, a reworked C API… Where last year was the year of the lakehouse, this release kicks off the year of DuckDB as a server.”

According to the DuckDB Stats website, DuckDB Python packages have been downloaded more than 625 million times, with monthly downloads averaging around 40 million so far in 2026.

DuckDB v2.0

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